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Three years ago, asked to identify the single greatest threat to US security, the Joint Chiefs named the debt level.

True then, truer today. The present administration’s boondoggles have squandered hundreds of billions of dollars when the treasury was already bare. The debt crisis is no longer just America’s business: the bankrupting of the greatest free democracy on Earth menaces every friend of liberty.

Let me share a British retrospective with American readers. By 1945, we had emptied our Exchequer and exhausted our credit. Sadly, that was the moment that the Attlee government picked to launch a ruinously expensive programme of state expansion. The result was that we went in three decades from being the world’s foremost power to being in such a wretched condition that we sought salvation in Europe.

You hardly need me to labour the parallel. The Obama administration’s federal programmes and healthcare plans would have been burdensome at any time, but in present economic circumstances threaten catastrophe. Next to the spending crisis, no other issue matters. Where the candidates stand on gun rights or gay marriage is, frankly, about as important as where they stand on the identity of Jack the Ripper. The only question that Americans should ask themselves between now and polling day is ‘Who will restore sanity to federal spending?’

Like many Americans, I blame both parties for creating the mess. Obama’s porkulus packages followed Bush’s, and Congressmen on both sides of the aisle were at fault. (To be fair, grassroots Republicans have deselected some of their guilty men and replaced them with fiscal conservatives.)

There is, however, one Congressman who grasps not only the gravity of his country’s predicament, but also the need for a plausible recovery plan. He is Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, and the good news is that he is the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee. I’ve posted the above video before, but it’s well worth watching again. In the flesh, Ryan is much as he seems in that film: sincere, charming, intelligent.

It’s true, of course, that Congress sets the budget, and I remain of the view that the legislative elections this November are the ones which matter most. Still, having an Executive which sees federal spending as the problem rather than the solution can’t hurt.